Ketchikan Alaska Encounter

littledennyzen Sat Feb 01, 2014 11:35 pm

I’m not much of a story teller and I don’t really know where to start. I've been an avid outdoors-man for many years, hiking, biking and kayaking as often as my schedule allows. I’ve never been much of a Bigfoot believer and really hadn't given the subject much thought until last summer.

I was taking a walk in the late afternoon, early evening on the Lunch Creek trail. It’s a forest service trail at the northern most end of the road system of Ketchikan, Alaska. It’s a nice little mile loop that follows a creek and meanders down to the beach and back. It was one of my favorite dog walking spots, before my girls kidneys went and she passed on to greater doggy adventures.

As I recall it was a Tuesday in mid-August. The days are pretty long that time of year. There’s good strong sunlight until nine o’clock or so. It was pretty deserted so I let Mookie off her leash. We weren't far into our walk, maybe ten minutes or so, when Mookie got her hackles up. She was a Puli-Xolo mix so she could be energetically aggressive. Mookie was acting strangely, alternating between growling, whining and barking. I got that uncanny feeling you get when you know you’re being watched. Mookie yelped like she’d been switched and darted back down the trail leaving me alone to face my growing unease.

I called after her, but she was hot on her way back to car. With the dog gone and me done yelling for her, I noticed just how quiet the forest was. It was that unnatural quiet, no birds or squirrels, just silence. At this point I was starting to freak out a little. That feeling of unreasonable fear was building inside. The feeling that makes you want to run like an axe murder is chasing you. I suppressed my urge to sprint like maniac and began walking briskly back towards my car and hopefully my dog.

I didn't go more than 20 feet when a heard what sounded like a branch breaking in the woods behind me to the right. I glanced over my shoulder and quickened my pace, power walking just short of breaking into a jog. Another branch broke and then another. I kicked it into a jog. Rustling and snapping sounds were now coming from all directions as if I was surrounded by unseen creatures crashing through the woods at me. I embraced my flight response and sprinted for safety.

Then came a sound that literally stopped me in my tracks. Ahead of me, sounding like it was standing in just around the corner of the path a howl arose that made all my hair stand on end. It was a screech and a bellow at the same time. It was both loud and soft, high pitch and base. It lasted no more than a second and just as it stopped, the woods erupted.

From what seemed like every direction at once, sticks and rocks and chucks of dirt came hurling at me out of the trees. I simply ran, hoping whatever made the sound wasn't on the trail ahead of me. Luckily most of the projectiles missed me as I bolted for the car. I took a hit in the shoulder and middle of my back, but nothing that slowed me down. I got the impression that things were pacing me in the woods on either side of the trail. I glanced into the forest as I ran and caught glimpses of shadowy shapes loping through the trees. I’m not the fastest runner, and I got the distinct impression that if they wanted to catch me they would have no trouble doing so.

My perception of time got all muddled. In some ways it felt like I was running forever, in others it seemed to be over in the blink of an eye. I broke out of the trail head and scrambled for my car. The door wasn't locked, but I still struggled with the handle in my panic. As I opened the door and hurled myself into the driver’s seat, Mookie appeared from under the car and dove in ahead of me. I hit the auto locks and began digging for my keys, keeping my eyes on the woods.

Nothing appeared. I snatched my keys out of my coat pocket and started the car. As I pulled away I glanced in my mirror. Just off the trail-head, slightly obscured by some brush was a hairy, apelike creature. It stood on its hind legs like a man, but had a slight stoop in its posture. It was covered in black matted hair. It wasn't large, maybe three or four feet tall. Its dark eyes made contact with mine through the mirror as I drove away. There was more than animal intelligence in those eyes. I looked almost like it was amused with me. I glanced forward to check the road, and when I looked back it was disappearing into the woods.

It took me a while to work up the courage to walk that trail again. I've been back, but I've never had another encounter. I have no idea what it was. It wasn't a bear or a dog. It looked like a small ape man. I've always thought of Bigfoot as being big. This thing was more like Bigfoot’s pygmy cousin.

sasdave Sun Feb 02, 2014 1:18 am

littledennyzen, There is story telling and there is telling a story of a experience that one has had, and many will say it is just a story; but, you expressed it profoundly and I believe it was a happening experience not a story. You touched on many key factures regarding this subject. The actions of your dog, the intense fear of being watched, being paced on one or both sides, branch breaking noises, etc. You had a collection of what most only experience one or two of these factures in their experience(s). Maybe the scream came from the small one you seen later on, could explain the eruption of earthly projectiles. Bet you know what I mean when I say beware of the tree huggers, when you go for a walk in the forest. Also don't scare those young or baby sasquatches. Sorry for going on, great write.

iwitness Sun Feb 02, 2014 2:37 am

wöw! i am sure that every aggressive BF is only being territorial or protecting a youngun. all three of us here have been close enough to have been in serious trouble, but here we stand! Wink

regardless of your anxiety, i appreciate you sharing your experience. also, congratulations for joining the flock. Very Happy

EDIT: i just had to chime-in again. i think you and your pup were being told to leave via ESP. the dog was much more sensitive, IMHO. i know people sneer when i mention this, but i truely believe the almighty Sas' is a "Long-Range Telepath"! i'll never forget the trance-like state i was under during my encounter.

frankiegoboomba Tue Feb 04, 2014 3:15 am

No way man! I've ben on that trail alot. I dont no about the stick and rock chukin, but I saw the harry little dude on my way down to beach at settlers. I cant say if it was a bigfoot or not. The thing aint any bigger than a 4th grader. I got a pictur of the thing with my phone. I come around a corner and he was sitin in the brush by a big red cedar. He wasnt scary or threatning. Really fast tho. He ducked back in the brush like greesed litning. I ran up to the spot where he ran off but I didnt seen him.

Hey man how do i show you guys the pictur.

frankiegoboomba Tue Feb 04, 2014 10:02 pm

My tekie buddy helped me out.

littledennyzen Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:25 pm

Sorry to abandon my post. Life got hectic. I just saw the picture. The creature is pretty blurry, but the colors are right. I recognize that bend in the trail. I was about 500 meters farther into the trail when I had my incident. I ran past that spot on the way out. When did you take that picture?

akbiologist Mon Mar 24, 2014 1:07 am

I have spent 22 years investigating and documenting several hundred reports of creatures resembling sasquatches on Prince of Wales Island and Revilla Island in southeast Alaska, all detailed and mapped in a book to be published later this year. In addition to three unusual tracks I found ten years ago on Lunch Creek, I have interviewed six individuals with sighting reports from Revilla’s Lunch Creek watershed, spanning a period of roughly forty years. In December, 2008, Donna, now a biology graduate at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks but then a university student living in Ketchikan, reported that ten days earlier, while hiking several miles up the Lunch Creek trail with her boyfriend, they had an unnerving encounter with several creatures that gave them a quite a scare. Donna related in an 2008 interview:

“We had been enjoying the mild weather, hardly any snow low-down, and we decided to explore up the Lunch Creek trail. It was a nice enough day, no wind and by late-afternoon we’d hiked up the trail to a spot where there are some really big spruce trees right beside the creek. It wasn’t raining or even windy, but all of a sudden we were pelted with big spruce cones that seemed to be thrown at us from low in the forest on both sides. It was really weird because we were alone on the trail…ours was the only car at the parking spot… and there was no sound of anyone else, really not even any sounds at all besides the creek running. It was at a spot right beside the creek where you could have waded across with little kids, if you had wanted to. My boyfriend said “Maybe it’s a good time to head back,’ so we just started walking quickly back down the trail. It was only about five minutes later that things began to get really weird. Suddenly a rock, about the size of a baseball, landed in front of us, and then another went whizzing past. I was looking around and I saw some black fur crouching about thirty yards away behind a big tree. I didn’t see its shape really well, but It ducked down quickly, not like a bear, but just like a person would do. My boyfriend call out “Ow!...what the heck!” and I saw a small rock smack off a big spruce just beside him. He was yelling at whoever to “Get the h… out of here!” but I couldn’t see or hear anyone. The rocks were definitely coming from three different directions; one came from across the creek.”

With a bit of a quaver in her voice, Donna continued,

“By this time I was getting pretty scared, I just wanted to get back to the car, and my boyfriend, who you could not call a little guy, just said, ‘Let’s get going, now!” We started back again, this time staying close together and walking as fast as we could without breaking into a run. I could hear whatever it was from time to time breaking branches as something, or couple of whatever it was, seemed like it kept up with us in the forest for about ten minutes. You could only see about fifty feet into the forest on one side and about 75 feet across the creek, so I never got more than that first look. We didn’t see or hear anything other than that. When we were about ten minutes from the highway, the following noises seemed to stop, but we kept hurrying all the same. When we got to the highway, ours was still the only car there.”

“On the way home, we talked about it. He told me that he got hit with a rock and asked me if I’d seen it. I told him I saw it hit too and the place on the tree about three inches big where the bark had gone flying off the tree. He also said he saw one of them, he thought it was the one that hit him, about fifty yards up the creek, right at the edge of the creek on our side of it. I didn’t see that one, but he said it “looked like a big, hairy, dark-brown thing on two legs going into the trees, just pretty much like a Bigfoot.” I asked him “how big?” and he said he couldn’t be exactly sure, but said “for sure, bigger than a man, as big as me at least…” and he is 6’4” and weighed about 300 lbs. I grew up in Alaska and have seen lots of bears, but what threw rocks at us from the trees that day weren’t bears. The next day I looked at his hip and backside where the rock hit him and he had a real nice bruise there.”

Donna concluded,

“Before all this happened, I hadn’t ever heard people talk much about Bigfoot in Alaska, but then I hadn’t paid too much attention, it wasn’t something I was very interested in. I didn’t talk to anyone else about this, most people in town would just stare at you and say, “I didn’t know you were on meds!’ It’s like…no matter what people might think…or just not think…there’s definitely something out there with hands already living there, and I think a lot of people just don’t want to think about that. But they are definitely real all right, we just don’t bump right into them that often. I kind of think what we saw might have been a family of them passing across the creek. They probably didn’t hear us coming over the sounds of the creek until we got close and I think they must have got pretty upset with us being there and that they were probably just trying to scare out of there. Well, they did a pretty good job too! It was all pretty incredible. ”

That’s Donna’s story. I knew Donna before this incident when she had an interest in a nursing career, but since that experience, for whatever reason, she has moved north, turned her sights on biology and is excelling at it. I just suspect that Lunch Creek might have had something to do with it. Her ex-boyfriend is still around, is recovered from the experience and goes deer hunting, just not up Lunch Creek. He confirmed the details as she had told them, only adding, “It was all kinda freaky. I kind of suspected they were sasquatches the second those cones started flying at us. We were being pelted from three directions. I’m sure there had to have been at least three of them but I only saw one. It was up the creek about fifty yards when a rock hit me…I was spinning around when it hit me on my right backside and I saw it jumping out of the creek into the bushes. It was dark brown or black, around 7 feet tall, give or take. I’m pretty sure was the one that threw the rock that hit me. It was a heck of a good throw and the creek was straight and about thirty feet wide where I saw it and a clear line of sight from me to it. I never saw the smaller black one that Donna said she did, but hey, it’s their home…they have a right to be there. I just wish they hadn’t switched from pinecones to rocks…that hurt like hell! I still hunt, I have my rifle, I keep going out in the fall. But if something like that ever happens again though, I’ll back up before the rocks start flying. Those things are strong!”

Of course this couple’s incredible story will be read by some as just that, just a story. But there are a few facts that stand out. As incredible as the story sounds, in separate interviews ten days later both witnesses stuck by the details and the man allowed his provider to confirm his bruise to me. With some persuasion I was able to get them to accompany me back up Lunch Creek to the spot where they had said it happened, about 2.75 miles up the trail. The location details matched right down to a spruce with a piece of bark missing about three feet off the ground. Donna still seemed a bit nervous and upset by it all but repeated her recollection of it all without changing any of the details. (88a)

Their story is really not much different than several others I have heard elsewhere in Alaska, the Yukon or British Columbia. . Such behavior attributed to sasquatches is has been well documented from British Columbia to northern Alaska and is speculatively described by biologist John Bindernagel as a deterrent display on the part of sasquatches that is part of a hierarchy of anxiety leading up to more aggressive demonstrations. Sasquatches in remote areas, by all appearances, can be highly territorial.

J. Robert Alley, Ketchikan, Alaska.

iwitness Tue Mar 25, 2014 3:03 am

Sasquatch are territorial, yet very compassionate it seems. this compassion i'm alleging also lends itself to high intelligence, IMO. they are smart enough to deter traffic, yet remain consealed thus avoiding the repercussions of a brutal attack. they must know of man's propensity for vengence against aggression.
thank you for chiming in! Smile

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Ketchikan Alaska Encounter

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